I don't feel he needs to regain time-travel no, but at this point in his history I do feel the time is past when he should be able to travel into deep space when needs be and under his own power - not necessarily to cross the universe - rather just to be able to at least across the galaxy at least... I feel you could restore some of his onetime space-travel capacity without sacrificing the ethics built up over the last three decades. All they have to do is say he is limited, by basic physical laws, to travel within the galaxy and/or nearby space sectors that contains the earth's solar system, or somesuch.
In doing this they can allow for some leeway for science-fiction story opportunities offworld while retaining his relative limitations when the next major 'Imeriex' or Cosmic disaster sails onto the DC universe horizon...

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That's interesting. I am positive that if you were given Superman, with the ability to travel through time, and you were mandated to use this ability, you could turn out a top story without slating the ability or the character.

I cut my comics superhero teeth in the mid to late Bronze-age era, where the fantastical was mandatory in storytelling, and a sense of wonder at entering the worlds of Superman and the Fantastic Four was a matter of course. Put aside The Mighty Thor and a look at superhero comics over the last three decades shows that those past requirements - a sense of wonder and the everyday fantastical - are qualities that have been largely relegated from modern storytelling.
The first Superman comic I discovered new on the shelves was Superman #382 - Lois Lane:Witch of Metropolis, before that it had all been books to be found, and exchanged, in used booktraders, and market stalls. It never occurred to me that there were new and up-to-date fresh books to be had...
The point is that Superman #382 is, in its basic elements, a bog-standard Superman tale of the era. All of the elements used within are familiar to Superman books of that era. What the writer and artist make of those familiar tropes and props though is a story that doesn't feel at all stale or familiar, it works. The plot is moving around the fact that a mishap while time-travelling has resulted in Superboy's mind now inhabiting his adult self, while the adult self is locked into the past in Superboy's body back in Smallville. It's not the first time this lot had been used, a similar device was seen back in Action Comics #466. But both these stories explore Superman as a character, while also fuelling the imagination as the reader wonders at how this is all going to be resolved. It's a story that uses the time-travel concept in a roundabout way, it's a mechanism for a story idea to be explored, not a magic wand plot point.

I was brought up on all this stuff, and those stories, to me, still hold up and still entertain. But then to me those worlds - Superman and the Fantastic Four - were all about imagination and escapism. It's a style of presentation and content that modern books now have an inbuilt recoil against. It's no coincidence I feel that the Fantastic Four slowly ebbed away into irrelevance over the last two to three decades, and while Superman generally fared better the books today show the strain to me as while the main title characters remain as compelling as ever the style and content feel... lacking. Superman has the feel being needlessly stuck in a perpetual state of fourth gear, when he is so easily capable of being engaged in first gear and aiming for his potential as a storytelling force.

I associate Superman with imagination, a sense of wonder, just as I associate the Fantastic Four with imagination and a sense of wonder.

Modern superhero comics though are geared to neither, the will isn't there to even aim for it....

...The Mighty Thor being all too often the honourable exception!

Available to Read, for Free! Fantasy Express #5. Go Back to 1983 - and meet Alan Moore in full, Read all about Countdown, And then there's Johnny Future...